HUNTSVILLE – Sam Houston State's inside dominance and too many ACU turnovers were more than the Wildcats could overcome Monday night as the Bearkats coasted to a 71-49 win over ACU in a Southland Conference men's basketball game at Johnson Coliseum.
The league-leading Bearkats improved to 21-5 overall and 12-1 in league play, while the Wildcats dropped their ninth straight game to fall to 9-16 and 3-9. ACU will be back in action Saturday at 7 p.m. when the Wildcats take on Southeastern Louisiana in Hammond, La., in a game that will be broadcast on ESPN3.
One week ago in a loss to Lamar, the Wildcats turned the ball over 21 times, and Monday night they turned it over 18 more times against the Bearkats. Those 18 turnovers led to 22 points for the Bearkats, who never trailed in Monday night's game.
The other factor that led to the Wildcats' demise was on the glass where the bigger, more physical Bearkats out-rebounded ACU, 40-27, and outscored them 34-14 in the paint.
"I thought our game plan was pretty good," ACU head coach
Joe Golding said. "We tried to slow the pace, but we tried to force some things and that led to bad turnovers and easy buckets for Sam Houston. They killed us on the offensive glass in the first half (10 offensive rebounds for Sam Houston in the opening half), and we turned the ball over way too much. That was the ballgame. We've done such a good job all season of taking care of the ball, I don't know what's going on these last two games. But we've got to get that figured out."
ACU actually cut the Sam Houston lead to 30-20 with 2:36 left in the first half on a layup by
Duran Porter, who was playing with a face mask after he broke his nose in practice Sunday. But the Bearkats closed the half on a 7-0 run that was capped by a 3-pointer by Dakarai Henderson with four seconds left in the half to send the Bearkats to the locker room leading 37-20.
The Wildcats scored the first five points of the second half on a layup by
Parker Wentz and a 3-pointer by
Austin Cooke, cutting the lead to 37-25. But the Bearkats ripped off a 10-4 run to take a 47-29, and their lead was never below 15 points the rest of the way.
Cooke led the Wildcats in scoring with 13 points, while
LaDarrien Williams had 11 points and
Parker Wentz nine. Sam Houston's 6-11 senior center, Michael Holyfield, had 12 points and 12 rebounds, while Aurimas Majauskas had 18 points and nine rebounds off the bench.
